150 FAMILIAR TREES 



It seems that the American Plane does not attain 

 the size or age of its Oriental brother. Neither form 

 occurs commonly in forests or even in large groups ; 

 but single trees growing in plains or in river alluvium, 

 in which it rejoices, sometimes reach enormous di- 

 mensions, and, from the gratefulness of their shade, 

 in hot countries have long been venerated. At 

 Caphyse, in Arcadia, a beautiful Plane-tree was shown 

 to Pausanias, which was said to have been planted 

 1,300 years before, by Menelaus, the husband of 

 Helen, before his departure for the Trojan War. 

 AY hen Xerxes invaded Greece, another Plane so 

 delighted him by its size, that he somewhat un- 

 kindly, but no doubt with good intentions encircled 

 it with a collar of gold, stamped a figure of it on a 

 gold medal which he continually wore, and tarried 

 so long beneath it as to ruin his chances of success. 

 Pliny speaks of a Plane in Lycia over eighty feet 

 in circumference, so that eighteen persons could dine 

 within it; whilst at Buyukdere, three leagues from 

 Constantinople, there still exists a tree of this species 

 100 feet high, 165 feet in girth, and 130 feet in the 

 spread of its branches, being, perhaps, over 2,000 

 years old. 



To the student of philosophy the Plane must 

 always be associated with the groves of the Academe, 

 in which walked the earliest of the peripatetic 

 philosophers. This may have been in the mind of 

 Tennyson, when he associated the Princess Ida's 

 female Academe with " the thick-leaved Platans of 

 the vale." Even in England, where it was thought 

 in 1633 that it would only nourish if " cherised and 



